Customer Reviews

UFO

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You turn the pages and seek it out, there it is! Staring back from the grime of a window, from above the receipt slot at an ATM, smeared on a wall, punctuating an ad for the lottery. Now you put the book down and it's still everywhere. You close your eyes and it's still there, figure eighting around your sorely depraved head (which itself is transfixed hoping on behalf of the rest of you that you don't miss a transmit of mercury, itself a communiqué, in situ (and out)). These guys, in a word, wrung the very necks of chaos until it produced fruit. Wanna cheat death? This is your book. You should trust me (I've seen it).

Hello potential Amazon customer. If you've read this far you already know what the book you're contemplating forking over your hard-earned dough is about. It's a coffee table book, right? About a graffiti artist, yes? That will either appeal to you on those merits or it won't. But there's another view, one you might not have thought of and that is what this book represents to ufology (the study of all things UFO). As a ufologist (nerd) and alien abductee (oooh!--crazy nerd!), I'm fairly qualified to address this. Ready? Here goes....

Ufology has yet to enjoy another surge in public hunger for information. Most of our efforts seem masturbatory: preaching to the converted, as it were. Where's the big event, damn it? Where's the new layer of weirdness that keeps this subject chugging?

Happy New Year, truth seekers, the new event has arrived in the form of an idea whose time has come. We couldn't have known it until right now but the peaks and valleys of odd events that have captured the public's imagination, from possible spaceship crashes to crop circles, all served to bring us to this moment when the cumulative effect of impressions left by such topics births into existence the latest mutation of the UFO phenomenon quite different, quite more evolved, than all that came before it. Yes, let it be known that 2007 heralds the arrival of the new phase: The complete integration of ufology into normal everyday acceptance by the average person.

Gone are the days of paranoia and demanding the truth. Gone are the days of highs and lows, the peaks and valleys of public clamoring. Now is the time of acceptance. Is this good for business? Definitely not in the short term, maybe not in the long--and that's an excellent indicator that the merits of ufology transcend the term "cottage industry."

Enter the Combustive Motor Corporation. Who are they? From their don't-miss website: "[S]ince the fall of 2001, the CMC has worked in many different, often disparate, mediums and disciplines developing individual `pieces' and ongoing projects which, by nature of their design and presentation, cannot be defined solely by rules of artistic engagement. Combining elements of performance, visual art, film, music, and other graphic media, the CMC seeks to present original works that transcend and defy the common expectations of art and audience."

They've now turned their gaze on ufology.

We've been trying to shovel legitimacy down the public's throat for decades now, haven't we? -- This is real! This is real! Pay attention! This is real!

They did; they didn't; did; didn't, like a tide. Then the tide stopped. We thought the field was dead. Alas, it is only evolving. The Illegitimate parts slough off and the real is what's left. What's left is now being integrated into the system, into the collective. This is, in fact, what we've been waiting for all along, where smart sane average people go: "Yeah, there are aliens here" and look at you funny if you don't know otherwise. That is why U.F.O. is an important book. Interesting in content, extraordinary in what it represents.

This is what happens when levelheaded outsiders think they're going to write an exploratory on an artist with a quirky interest and that interest happens to be aliens. They find out right quick that there's more in the can of worms than worms and they immediately need to share the revelation with the public. The difference between today's public and that of yesteryear is that we're now ready to hear it.

Plus it's an art book. So... cool.

Anyway, you've made it this far. Ya got that wad of cash burning a hole in yer pocket. Why not pick up the book (the layout of which makes it an art object in and of itself)? See if it's all it intends to be. See if it's anything near what I described. Wonder why it is there's this bobble-headed alien sitting atop a fiery rocket ship blasting off from the cave paintings of our ancient past straight into the wall art of the present.

Ask yourself what this means for our future.

I got this book because I'm interested in the graffiti artist UFO, who by the way hates this book....but anyway decided to see what all the drama was about between the artist and the writer of the book. I didn't really get what the writer was going for, like I said it had some good flicks in it but failed horribly to try and make it something more than it was, which is a book with pictures of UFO graff

I was at the launch party for this book and had a good look at it. I am sure this book was made with good intentions, but it didn't really turn out that well. In fact, it failed what I would consider the ultimate test for a book about an artist: it was rejected by the artist is was writted on!
The book is a nice format and clearly a lot of effort went in to making it, but sadly it lacks where it matters most - in the content.